Originally published April 2019. Rewritten June 2026.
The five technology trends that defined 2019 — AI as a category, blockchain and crypto, voice computing, IoT, and the broader cloud expansion — all played out in measurable ways across the following seven years. Several produced the structural shifts the 2019 forecast anticipated. Others underperformed. And the trends that did not yet exist in 2019 — generative AI as a buyer-research substrate, frontier AI labs as category-defining brands, AI Communications as a discipline — have collectively eclipsed the entire 2019 trend list in commercial significance.
The graded retrospective. And the trends actually worth watching in 2026.
How the 2019 five played out
1. AI as a category — full hit, but the timing was wrong. The 2019 forecast called AI as a major commercial category. The forecast was structurally correct. The timing was wrong. AI as a category produced modest commercial impact through 2021. Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's ChatGPT (launched November 2022), Google's Gemini, and the broader frontier AI lab cycle then produced the largest technology category shift since the smartphone — but on a timeline three years past the 2019 forecast. The brands that built for the 2022-2025 AI cycle compounded substantially. The brands that called the 2019 timing exactly produced muted outcomes between 2019 and 2022.
2. Blockchain and crypto — mixed. The 2019 forecast called blockchain as a structural shift in financial infrastructure. The actual trajectory has been more complicated. Bitcoin and Ethereum operate as substantial financial categories. NFTs went through the 2021-2022 cycle and the subsequent reset. The broader blockchain enterprise-infrastructure thesis substantially underperformed the 2019 expectation. The category exists but has not produced the broad commercial shift the 2019 forecast anticipated.
3. Voice computing — substantially below forecast. Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri all operate as commercial products. None has produced the platform-level shift the 2019 voice-computing forecast anticipated. The category has been substantially eclipsed by conversational AI through ChatGPT, Claude, and the broader assistant category. The 2019 forecast pointed at the right destination through the wrong vehicle.
4. IoT — modest growth, no platform shift. Connected devices, smart home infrastructure, industrial IoT, and the broader connected-device category have grown materially but have not produced the platform-level shift the 2019 forecast anticipated. The category continues as a substantial but incremental technology category, not the structural shift the forecast called.
5. Cloud expansion — full hit. AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and the broader hyperscaler category produced exactly the sustained growth the 2019 forecast anticipated. The category has continued compounding through 2026 and remains one of the strongest sustained technology growth stories of the decade.
The five trends actually worth watching in 2026
1. Generative AI as buyer research substrate. Over a third of US consumers begin product research with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or Perplexity rather than Google. The share is growing across categories. This is the largest structural shift in buyer behavior since search itself became dominant. The brands building AI Communications infrastructure are compounding. The brands not building for the new substrate are losing share to brands that recognized the shift.
2. AI-native development infrastructure.Lovable, Cursor, v0, Bolt, Replit, GitHub Copilot, and the broader AI-native development category have restructured how software gets built. The category is producing measurable productivity gains for technology operators and substantial commercial growth for the platforms themselves.
3. AI safety and alignment as a sustained category. Anthropic's positioning around safety, alignment research, and responsible AI development has produced a sustained category that did not exist at meaningful scale in 2019. The category will continue scaling through 2026 and beyond as AI capabilities expand and regulatory frameworks mature.
4. Energy and infrastructure as the constraint. AI compute requirements have made data center capacity, electrical grid infrastructure, and the broader energy category structurally important to the technology category. ExxonMobil, the broader energy majors, and the nuclear renaissance category are all increasingly part of the technology infrastructure conversation.
5. The retrieval layer as the new buyer interface. Beyond consumer AI engines, the broader retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) category, AI-native search, and the structured-knowledge layer that all of these depend on collectively represent the substrate the next decade of commercial technology will run on.
What the structural pattern reveals
The 2019 forecast got the macro categories substantially right but missed the specific vehicles that would deliver the predicted shifts. The pattern is structural: technology forecasts that name categories correctly often miss the specific products, companies, or interfaces that will actually carry the category to scale. The brands that built for the AI category in 2019-2021 had to redirect substantially when ChatGPT and Claude landed in 2022. The brands that built for voice computing in 2019 saw their category absorbed by conversational AI.
The implication for 2026: build for the right destination, but stay flexible about the vehicle that will get the category there. The 2026 trends are clear in macro shape. The specific products and platforms that will dominate them are still resolving.
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
